Posts Tagged ‘ISRAEL’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 13, 2021 at 12:10 am
According to Michael Scheuer, the United States faces a danger that threatens “the core of our social and civil institutions.”
Scheuer is a 20-year CIA veteran who, from 1996 to 1999, headed Alec Station, the CIA’s unit assigned to track Osama bin Laden at the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.
He’s also the author of two seminal works on America’s fight against terrorism: Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (2003) and Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (2008).
And in Marching Toward Hell he bluntly indicts the “profound and willful ignorance” of America’s “bipartisan governing elite.”
Scheuer defines this elite as “the inbred set of individuals who have influenced…drafted and conducted U.S. foreign policy” since 1973.Within that group are:
- Politicians
- Journalists
- Academics
- Preachers
- Civil servants
- Military officers
- Philanthropists.
“Some are Republicans, others Democrats; some are evangelicals, others atheists; some are militarists, others pacifists; some are purveyors of Western civilization, others are multiculturalists,” writes Scheuer.
But for all their political and/or philosophical differences, the members of this governing elite share one belief in common: “An unquenchable ardor to have the United States intervene abroad in all places, situations and times.”
And he warns that this “bipartisan governing elite” must radically change its policies–such as unconditional support for Israel and corrupt, tyrannical Muslim governments.
Otherwise, Americans will be locked in an endless “hot war” with the Islamic world.
On September 28, 2014, President Barack Obama provided an example of this “unquenchable ardor to have the United States intervene abroad in all places, situations and times.”
In an appearance on 60 Minutes, Obama spoke about his recent decision to commit American troops to fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Steve Kroft: I think everybody applauds the efforts that you’ve made and the size of the coalition that has been assembled.
But most of them are contributing money or training or policing the borders, not getting particularly close to the contact. It looks like once again we are leading the operation. We are carrying…
President Obama: Steve, that’s always the case. That’s always the case. America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world.
And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us. That’s the deal.
President Barack Obama
Kroft: I mean, it looks like we are doing 90%.
Obama: Steve…when there’s an earthquake in Haiti, take a look at who’s leading the charge making sure Haiti can rebuild. That’s how we roll. And that’s what makes this America.
Scheuer believed that America shouldn’t be the world’s 9-1-1 number. And that the place to start was by not deploying troops to Syria.
By the time Obama gave his 60 Minutes interview, more than 470,000 people had been killed in Syria’s uprising-turned-civil war. The conflict began on March 15, 2011, triggered by protests demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
And cheering on America’s intervention was the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—which was safely based in Great Britain.
According to its website:
“The silence of the International community for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria encourages the criminals to kill more and more Syrian people because they have not found anyone that deter them from continuing their crimes that cause to wound more than 1,500,000 people; some of them with permanent disabilities, make hundreds of thousands children without parents, displace more than half of Syrian people and destroy infrastructure, private and public properties.”
In short: It’s the duty of non-Muslims to bring civilized behavior to Islamics.
In fact, there were powerful reasons why the United States should steer clear of that conflict.
First, since 1979, the U.S. State Department had listed Syria as a sponsor of terrorism.
Among the terrorist groups it supports: Hizbollah and Hamas. For years, Syria provided a safehouse in Damascus to Ilich Ramírez Sánchez–-the notorious terrorist better known as Carlos the Jackal.
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez–“Carlos the Jackal”
Second, there were no “good Syrians” for the United States to support––only murderers who had long served a tyrant and other murderers who wished to become the next tyrant.
Third, the United States didn’t know what it wanted to do in Syria, except “send a message.”
Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military theorist, wrote: “War is the continuation of state policy by other means.” But President Barack Obama didn’t state his “state policy” toward Syria—or what he intended to gain by attacking it.
Obama had said he wasn’t “after regime-change.” That would leave Assad in power–-and free to go on killing those who resist his rule.
For America to avoid permanent military entanglements in the Middle East, it must learn to mind its own business.
Among Michael Scheuer’s warnings: The United States cannot defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) through air power alone.
President Barack Obama authorized airstrikes against ISIL in September, 2014. Since then, the United States Air Force has dropped thousands of bombs on ISIL convoys.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 12, 2021 at 12:05 am
On July 9, Conservative New York Times Columnist David Brooks offered the case for why the United States should retain its military forces in Afghanistan.
He did so in response to President Joseph Biden’s July 8 announcement that the withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan would conclude by August 31:
“We did not go to Afghanistan to nation build. It’s the right and the responsibility of Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”
America had attacked Afghanistan in October, 2001, in response to the September 11 attacks orchestrated by Al Quaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was then a “guest” of the country’s ruling Taliban, which refused to turn him over.
Osama bin Laden
The initial goal of American military forces had been simple and direct: Find Bin Laden—and kill him.
But by December, 2001, Bin Laden was no longer in Afghanistan. He was thought to be living somewhere in the “no-man’s-land” between that country and Pakistan.
At that point, American forces could—and should—have been withdrawn.
But they weren’t.
Instead, the mission became a “civilize-the-barbarians” one. That is: Make Afghanistan a democracy where everyone—especially women—could be safe from hardline Islamic fundamentalists intent on creating a theocratic dictatorship.
In previous years, Brooks’ argument for retaining American troops in Afghanistan would have been made by liberals—and furiously assailed by conservatives.
On the July 9 edition of The PBS Newshour, Brooks said: “I think [Biden]’s making a mistake [in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan].
“And it’s become obvious in record time that it’s a mistake. When he announced the policy initially, he said he had faith in the Afghan government to hold Afghanistan together from the Taliban. That has fallen apart.
“…Eighty-five percent of the territory has already fallen to the Taliban. The Taliban seems completely confident they will take over.
“I think it was 2014 or so, when this Pakistani young lady, Malala, won the Nobel Prize, and who was shot in the head by the Taliban for going to school. There are a lot of Afghan Malalas out there. And we were all moved by her.
“And we all sympathized and thought that was a very important cause that young women in this part of the world should be able to get an education. And we’re walking away from that. We’re walking away from the idea that Afghanistan will stay one country.
“…So, to me, what we were doing over the last year, which was like 2,500 troops, relatively low casualties, was a price worth paying for humanitarian and strategic reasons.”
And when the United States isn’t voluntarily placing its soldiers in harm’s way, world leaders are calling for them to be placed there.
On July 7, Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, plunging an always chaotic “nation” into even greater chaos. On July 10, Haiti’s interim government asked the United States to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure as it tries to stabilize the country.
Anticipating such a request, Brooks said on the July 9 edition of The PBS Newshour:
“Even the story earlier in the program on Haiti, if Haiti is asking us to come in to stabilize Haiti, is that our role anymore? It used to be you had some sense of where America’s posture was. I don’t think I have a sense of where American’s posture is right now.”
Which brings us to former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer.
According to Scheuer, for all their ideological differences, Republicans and Democrats share one belief in common: An unquenchable ardor to have the United States intervene abroad in all places, situations and times.”
Scheuer is a 20-year CIA veteran—as well as an author, historian, foreign policy critic and political analyst.
Michael Scheuer
From 1996 to 1999 he headed Alec Station, the CIA’s unit assigned to track Osama bin Laden at the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.
He has served as a news analyst for CBS News and adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies.
And he’s convinced that if America wants peace, it must learn to mind its own business.
He’s also the author of two seminal works on America’s fight against terrorism: Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (2003) and Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam after Iraq (2008).
Scheuer argues that Islamics don’t hate Americans because of “our way of life”—with its freedoms of speech and worship and its highly secular, commercialized culture. Instead, Islamic hatred toward the United States stems from America’s six longstanding policies in the Middle East:
- U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments;
- U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula;
- U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis’ thrall;
- U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low;
- U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; and
- U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
Scheuer contends that no amount of American propaganda will win “the hearts and minds” of Islamics who can “see, hear, experience, and hate” these policies firsthand.
But there is another danger facing America, says Scheuer, one that threatens “the core of our social and civil institutions.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 5, 2020 at 12:08 am
Fifty-two years ago, the Reverend Martin Luther King was shot to death as he stood on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. He had come there to lead a march of striking garbage workers.
New York United States Senator—and now Presidential candidate—Robert Francis Kennedy had been scheduled to give a speech in Indianapolis, Indiana, before a black audience.
Just before he drove into the city to deliver his address, he learned of King’s assassination. There was a real danger that rioting would erupt. Police who had been assigned to protect him said they wouldn’t accompany him into the inner city.
Kennedy drove off anyway, leaving behind his police escort.
Standing on a podium mounted on a flatbed truck, Kennedy spoke for just four minutes and 57 seconds.
His waiting audience hadn’t yet learned of King’s death. Kennedy broke the news to gasps, and then gave an impromptu speech eulogizing the slain civil rights leader.
For the first time since the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963, he spoke publicly of that killing. He noted that JFK—like King—had also been killed by a white man.
And he called upon the crowd to “dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”
Riots erupted in 60 cities following King’s death—but not in Indianapolis.
During the mid- and late 1960s, Robert Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort from those aroused by Donald Trump.
Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator from New York (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.
In October, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his wise counsel helped steer America from the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. As a U.S Senator he championed civil rights and greater Federal efforts to fight poverty.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished—while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.
As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’
“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.
“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”
Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4—when he was shot in the back of the head.
His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel.
Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6. He was 42.
On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.
Little Leaguers clutched baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.
A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy
Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”
America has never again seen a Presidential candidate who combined toughness on crime and compassion for the poor.
Republican candidates have waged war on crime—and the poor. And Democratic candidates have moved to the Right in eliminating anti-poverty programs.
RFK had the courage to fight the Mafia—and the compassion to fight poverty. At a time when Americans long for candidates to give them positive reasons for voting, his kind of politics are sorely missed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 9, 2020 at 12:10 am
There can be peace—at least for the United States—in the Middle East.
But to achieve this, Western Europe and the United States will have to make radical changes in their approach to that part of the world.
First, the United States must embark on a crash program to develop alternatives to oil.
The Islamic world offers only one reason for American concern: oil.
Yet its consumption threatens the future of the world through global warming. And it keeps America tethered to regimes that are fundamentally unstable and hostile to the West.
Second, once the United States weans itself from its dependency on fossil fuels, it can safely end its relationship with such regimes.
That means putting an end to spending billions of dollars every year to prop up dictatorial regimes like those in Iraq and Egypt. And it also means stopping the supply of big-ticket military hardware (like fighter planes and missiles) to Islamic regimes.
When the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, he was probably the best-armed Islamic leader in the Middle East. His army and air force bristled with sophisticated American weaponry he had bought with billions of dollars in oil revenues.
Shah of Iran
But he had thoroughly alienated his people. Liberals thought him a tyrant, and conservatives thought him a traitor to Islam. So when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini flew to Iran from his self-exile in Paris, no one in the Shah’s army and air force raised a hand in his defense.
And all that sophisticated American weaponry fell into Khoemeini’s waiting hands.
Third, the United States should end its “Permanent Bodyguard” relationship with Israel.
Every nation—-including Israel—has the absolute right to defend itself from aggression.
But no nation—including Israel—has the right to expect another nation to act as its permanent bodyguard.
Millions of Americans believe they are morally obligated to defend Israel owing to the barbarism of the Holocaust. But America was never a party to this, and has nothing to atone for.
But there is another reason many Americans feel committed to Israel. And it has nothing to do with concern for the fates of Israelis.
It lies in the mythology of the Christian Right. Millions of fundamentalist Christians believe that before Jesus Christ can awaken from his 2,000-year slumber, Israel must first re-conquer every inch of territory it supposedly held during the reign of Kings David and Solomon.
Right-wing Christian fantasy: Dead man hovering
After Christ returns, they believe, the Jews will face a choice: Become Christians or go to hell. For evangelical Christians, Jews remain the eternal “Christ killers.”
And if Jews must assume temporary control of the Middle East to bring about the return of a man who died 2,000 years ago, so be it.
Many Right-wing members of the House of Representatives and Senate share this utterly irrational belief—thus proving their unfitness for public office.
Fourth, the United States and its Western European allies should erect a “Sand Curtain” around the Middle East.
For 44 years—1947 to 1991—the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War. Essentially, the United States drew a ring around the Soviet Union—including those nations its armies had seized following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
The United States said, in effect: “We can’t liberate the countries you’re now occupying”—because that would have triggered a nuclear World War III. “But we won’t allow you to occupy and enslave any other countries. And if you try to do so, it will mean total war.”
That’s why America did nothing to aid Hungarians when they overthrew their Soviet occupiers in 1956. That rebellion was quickly and brutally crushed.
And the United States stood by when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968 after Czechoslovakia dared to relax controls over its citizens.
Fifth, a “Sand Curtain” around the Middle East would work as follows:
America would withdraw all of its forces from the Middle East—but keep a good portion stationed in Europe.
The President would then publicly announce: “From now on, you are the masters of your own destinies—so long as what you do affects only those of you living in the Middle East.
“We recognize that barbarism and violence have always been a part of life in the Middle East. And we don’t expect this to change.
“So go ahead and destroy as many of your own citizens as you wish—either because they’re Jewish or Christians, or because Sunni Muslims hate Shiite Muslims and Shiite Muslims hate Sunni Muslims.
“Just don’t do anything that poses a threat to those living outside your barbaric lands. In short: Western Europe and the United States are strictly off-limits to you.
“If you aim your aggression at either, we will consider this an act of war and use all the weapons at our disposal—including nuclear ones—to wipe you from the face of the Earth.“
The United States cannot enforce peace between Islamics and Israelis. Nor between Christians and Islamics. Nor between Islamics and Islamics.
But it can impose an embargo to confine such barbarism to only the Middle East.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on October 11, 2019 at 12:07 am
Donald Trump routinely makes fun of others.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, he infamously mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting the joints.
In 2018, Trump viciously attacked Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who had come forward to allege that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, had sexually assaulted her when she was 15.
But he holds himself immune from ridicule.
On September 26, Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, rose to the occasion.
Adam Schiff
During a hearing of his committee, he gave a dramatic reading—part news summary, part parody. It centered on an extortion call Trump had made on July 25 to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump had wanted a “favor”: Investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who has had business dealings in Ukraine.
Unspoken was the threat of cancelling $400 million in promised American military aid to Ukraine.
So Schiff—whose committee is investigating that incident—gave a summary of that call during a hearing.
It wasn’t the news summary part that infuriated Trump, but the mockery included within it.
As Schiff explained to CNN: “The fact that that’s not clear is a separate problem in and of itself. Of course, the President never said, ‘If you don’t understand me I’m going to say it seven more times.’ My point is, that’s the message that the Ukraine president was receiving in not so many words.”
Trump had aimed his own brand of juvenile humor at Schiff in the past, referring to him as “little Adam Schit.”
Donald Trump
But for Schiff to dare to make fun of him was—for Trump—entirely too much.
“Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people,” Trump tweeted. “It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?”
Trump is the first President to openly equate criticism—especially mockery—of himself with treason. Like the French King, Louis X1V, he believes: L’État, c’est moi—“I am the State.”
And treason is a crime that has traditionally been punished with death.
So Trump more than gave the game away when he tweeted, on October 7: “Nancy Pelosi knew of all of the many Shifty Adam Schiff lies and massive frauds perpetrated upon Congress and the American people.
“This makes Nervous Nancy every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason. I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly ‘Colluded’ with them, must all be immediately Impeached!”
Nancy Pelosi, as speaker of the House of Representatives, has done nothing that meets the Constitutional definition of treason: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
Moreover, members of Congress cannot be impeached. Impeachment is a Congressional tool for investigating judges or executive branch officials they believe may have committed crimes.
No doubt many people believe that Trump wouldn’t dare ask his hand-picked Attorney General, William Barr, to indict Adam Schiff or Nancy Pelosi for treason.
Of course, there were many people who believed that Trump wouldn’t dare fire FBI Director James Comey for pursuing an investigation into Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
Or that he would openly call on a hostile foreign power—China—to intervene in the 2020 Presidential election.
A President who can invite a hostile foreign power to slander his political opponent can just as easily call on a hostile foreign power to assassinate that opponent.
Trump has claimed: “Let me tell you, I’m only interested in corruption. I don’t care about politics. I don’t care about Biden’s politics….”
But if Trump were concerned about fighting corruption, he wouldn’t have:
- Focused his anti-corruption campaign entirely on Biden;
- Defended his former 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who made millions working for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych;
- Praised others mired in corruption scandals—such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump is counting on Americans’ awe of the Presidency to convince them of his integrity.
But according to Robert A. Prentice, Professor of Government and Society at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin:
“President Donald Trump’s lying is off the charts. No prominent politician in memory bests Trump for spouting spectacular, egregious, easily disproved lies. The birther claim. The vote fraud claim. The attendance at the inauguration claim. And on and on and on.
“Every fact checker—Kessler, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, PolitiFact—finds a level of mendacity unequaled by any politician ever scrutinized. For instance, 70 percent of his campaign statements checked by PolitiFact were mostly false, totally false, or “pants on fire” false.”
Donald Trump prides himself on setting Presidential precedents. He may turn out to be the first President who invoked “treason” against his political opponents—and was himself found to be a menace to the nation he claimed to love.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on October 10, 2019 at 12:07 am
In 2016, Donald Trump asked Russia to intervene in the upcoming Presidential election.
At a July 22, 2016 press conference in Doral, Florida, Trump said: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing [from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s computer]. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts.
And on October 3, 2019, Trump called on another foreign—and enemy—nation to churn out “dirt” on another Democratic Presidential candidate: Former Vice President Joe Biden: “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.”
Donald Trump
Asked if he had requested China’s “President-for-Life” Xi Jinping to do so, Trump replied: “I haven’t. But it’s certainly something we should start thinking about.”
Trump’s comments came just one week before a Chinese delegation was to arrive in Washington to resume protracted trade negotiations.
And to make certain the Chinese got the message, Trump warned: “I have a lot of options on China, but if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.”
Despite Trump’s accusations, there has been no evidence of corruption by Biden or his son, Hunter.
Having twice called on foreign—and enemy—nations to subvert American Presidential elections, Trump feels himself qualified to define who is guilty of treasonous behavior.
Enter Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Adam Schiff
In July, 2019, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, which faces increasing aggression from Russia.
On July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who has had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden.
But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it.
Schiff tweeted: “The transcript of the call reads like a classic mob shakedown: — We do a lot for Ukraine — There’s not much reciprocity — I have a favor to ask — Investigate my opponent — My people will be in touch — Nice country you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to her.”
Then, even worse for Trump’s ego, Schiff went further. He dared to parody Trump’s extortion attempt.
Joe Biden
On September 26, during a session of the Intelligence Committee, Schiff gave a dramatic reading—part news summary, part parody—of the call with Zelensky.
He prefaced the reading by saying, “In not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates.
“President Zelensky, eager to establish himself at home as the friend of the President of the most powerful nation on earth, had at least two objectives: Get a meeting with the President and get more military help. And so what happened on that call?
“Zelensky begins by ingratiating himself, and he tries to enlist the support of the President. He expresses his interest in meeting with the President, and says his country wants to acquire more weapons from us to defend itself.
“And what is the President’s response? Well, it reads like a classic organized crime shakedown.
“Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates. ‘We’ve been very good to your country. Very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what? I don’t see much reciprocity here.
“‘I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent. Understand? Lots of it, on this and on that.
“‘I’m going to put you in touch with people, and not just any people. I’m going to put you in touch with the attorney general of the United States, my attorney general, Bill Barr. He’s got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him. And I’m going to put you in touch with Rudy [Trump’s personal attorney and fixer].
“‘You’re going to love him [Giuliani]. Trust me. You know what I’m asking? And so I’m only going to say this a few more times in a few more ways. And by the way, don’t call me again. I’ll call you when you’ve done what I asked.'”
Schiff later told CNN that he was trying to mock the President’s conduct.
The next day, September 27, Trump demanded in a tweet that Schiff “immediately resign.”
Trump, of course, has no power to force a member of Congress to resign.
And on September 29, Trump tweeted: “….Schiff made up what I actually said by lying to Congress……
“His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason…..”
Treason?
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on October 9, 2019 at 12:03 am
The American colonists had learned firsthand how capricious and deadly a monarch’s rage could be. Under English law, “treason” could be liberally applied to anyone who offended the Royal Personage.
For example: During the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, John Stubbs, an English pamphleteer and political commentator, opposed her proposed marriage to Francis, Duke of Anjou, a Roman Catholic—and the brother of the King of France.
Stubbs, a Puritan who hated Catholicism, damned in in a scathing pamphlet—which infuriated Elizabeth’s court. At first, the Queen favored the death penalty. But then she was persuaded to choose a lesser sentence: Amputation of his right hand by driving a cleaver driven through the wrist with a mallet.
After the sentence was carried out, Stubbs cried, “God save the Queen!” before fainting. He was then imprisoned for eighteen months.
Queen Elizabeth 1
So when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution of the United States, they specifically restricted the definition of treason.
In Article III, section 3, the framers wrote:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
The Constitution permits the United States Congress to create the offense, and restricts any punishment for treason to only the convicted (the second paragraph). The crime is prohibited by legislation passed by Congress.
The United States Code, in 18 U.S.C. 2381, states:
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
For President Donald Trump, treason means any opposition to or criticism of himself.
Donald Trump
A tyrant by nature, he envies foreign tyrants who have powers to slaughter anyone they dislike. Among the proofs of this:
- During a February, 2017 interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Trump defended Russian President Vladimir Putin’s killing of political opponents. When O’Reilly noted, “But he’s a killer,” Trump replied: “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
- Asked by a Fox News reporter why he praised murderous North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, he replied: “He’s a tough guy. Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, tough people, and you take it over from your father.…If you could do that at 27 years old, I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that.”
Kim Jong-Un
Blue House (Republic of Korea) [KOGL (http://www.kogl.or.kr/open/info/license_info/by.do) %5D, via Wikimedia Commons
- Of Philippines dictator Rodrigo Duterte, whose death squads have slaughtered more than 6,000 citizens, Trump said: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem.”
- After Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan cracked down on Turkish civil society, the media, and his opponents, Trump congratulated him: “Frankly, he’s getting very high marks. He’s also been working with the United States. We have a great friendship and the countries—I think we’re right now as close as we’ve ever been….a lot of that has to do with a personal relationship.”
- And at a party fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort in March, 2018, Trump praised China’s dictator Xi Jinping: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
Nor has Trump blanched at calling on foreign dictators to destroy his political opponents.
On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of his Presidential campaign met at Trump Tower with at least two lobbyists with ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The participants included:
- Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.;
- His son-in-law, Jared Kushner;
- His then-campaign manager Paul Manafort;
- Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin; and
- Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of “having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence.”
The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton.
And at a July 22, 2016 press conference in Doral, Florida, Trump said: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing [from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s computer]. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
This was nothing less than treason—calling upon a foreign power, hostile to the United States, to interfere in its Presidential election.
Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts.
And on October 3, 2019, Trump called on another dictator—China’s “President-for-Life”” Xi Jinping—to churn out “dirt” on Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 30, 2019 at 12:08 am
“Drawing Present-Day Lessons: Is Donald Trump the Modern Caligula?”
That’s the question raised in the last chapter of the new biography: Caligula: The Mad Emperor of Rome, by Stephen Dando-Collins
Dando-Collins is the award-winning author of 43 books—nine of which focus on ancient Rome. Among these: Mark Antony’s Heroes and The Ides: Caesar’s Murder and the War for Rome.
Among the similarities he finds between Caligula and Trump:
- Caligula ruled the largest military and economic power of his age.
- Trump rules the largest military/economic power of the 21st century.
- Caligula emptied the Roman treasury through extravagant spending.
- Trump’s combination of massive tax cuts for the rich and equally massive Federal spending has ballooned the national debt to $22.5 trillion.
- Neither Caligula nor Trump served in the military.
- Neither Caligula nor Trump had governing experience before ascending to power.
- Both had multiple wives—Caligula had four; Trump has three.
- Once in power, Caligula rid himself of advisers who tried to restrain his worst impulses or refused to act on them.
- So has Trump.
Gaius Caligula
- After an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Britain, Caligula declared war on Neptune, the god of the sea. He ordered his soldiers to whip the waves and gather seashells to bring home as “spoils.” He then sent messengers to Rome claiming victory.
- Trump has multiple times seriously suggested using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States,
- Caligula boasted: “Bear in mind that I can treat anyone exactly as I please.”
- Trump has similarly boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
- Caligula thought himself a military genius—stealing the breastplate from the corpse of Alexander the Great and wearing it.
- Trump has boasted: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.”
- Caligula delighted in humiliating adversaries. According to his biographer, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus: “He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death, and trying to rouse him to gaiety and jesting by a great show of affability.”
- Trump similarly relishes humiliating both adversaries and former allies in press conferences and on Twitter, giving them derogatory nicknames such as “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, “Little Adam Schitt” (Schiff), “Little Marco” Rubio, “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-Un.
Donald Trump
- Caligula never forgot a slight and relished exacting vengeance, even years afterward. His infamous order for torturing victims: “Strike so that he may feel that he is dying.”
- Trump has famously said: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”
- Caligula reveled in self-worship, calling himself: “Pious,” “Child of the Camp,” “Father of the Armies,” and “Greatest and Best of Caesars.”
- Trump has similarly declared himself “so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!”
- Flattered by sycophants, Caligula began to believe himself a god. He appeared at the temple of Castor and Pollux to be worshiped as Jupiter Latiaris. He also set up a special temple to his own godhead.
- Similarly, during a press conference, Trump reached heavenward for legitimacy. Defending his potentially disastrous trade war with China, he proclaimed: “Somebody had to do it. I am the Chosen One.”
- He also quoted Right-wing conspiracist Wayne Allyn Root as saying: “The Jewish people in Israel love him [Trump] like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God.”
- Caligula lived in incest with his three sisters. He violated Drusilla when he was still a minor.
- Trump has boasted: “I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
The trait that finally destroyed Caligula was his joy in humiliating others.
His fatally taunted Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with nicknames like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Trump has repeatedly outraged members of the American Intelligence community—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—by siding with Vladimir Putin against them. He has in effect accused them of lying about Russian subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
On December 22, 2018, Trump shut down the Federal Government, forcing Secret Service agents to work for more than a month without pay because Democrats refused to fund his senseless “wall” against Mexico.
Now Trump—through the US Citizenship and Immigration Services—has decreed that children born to American military members outside the United States will no longer be automatically considered citizens.
Many members of all of these agencies—FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, Secret Service, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines—come in contact with him almost daily. And many of them are armed. (Secret Service agents are always armed.)
As Niccolo Machiavelli warns in The Discourses: “When a prince becomes universally hated, it is likely that he’s harmed some individuals—who thus seek revenge. This desire is increased by seeing that the prince is widely loathed.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 29, 2019 at 12:37 am
Donald Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC) on March 2, 2019, was an occasion for rejoicing among his supporters.
But for those who prize rationality and decency in a President, it was a dismaying and frightening experience.
For two hours, Trump gave free reign to his anger and egomania.
Among his unhinged commentaries:
“He called me up. He said, ‘You’re a great President. You’re doing a great job.’ He said, ‘I just want to tell you you’re a great President and you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.'”
Trump attributed these remarks to California’s liberal governor, Gavin Newsom. On February 11, 2019, Newsom announced the withdrawal of several hundred National Guardsmen from the state’s southern border with Mexico—defying Trump’s request for support from border states.
Donald Trump at CPAC
“You know if you remember my first major speech—you know the dishonest media they’ll say, ‘He didn’t get a standing ovation.’ You know why? Because everybody stood and nobody sat. They are the worst. They leave that out.”
Once again, he’s the persecuted victim of an unfair and totally unappreciative news media.
“And I love the First Amendment; nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. I mean, who use its more than I do? But the First Amendment gives all of us—it gives it to me, it gives it to you, it gives it to all Americans, the right to speak our minds freely. It gives you the right and me the right to criticize fake news and criticize it strongly.”
Trump has repeatedly called the nation’s free press “the enemy of the people”—a slander popularized by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. And while Trump brags about his usage of the First Amendment, he’s used Non-Disclosure Agreements and threats of lawsuits to deny that right to others.
“For too long, we’ve traded away our jobs to other countries. So terrible.”
While this remark—like virtually every remark Trump made at CPAC—got rousing applause, he failed to mention that his own products are made overseas:
- Ties: Made in China
- Suits: Made in Indonesia
- Trump Vodka: Made in the Netherlands, and later in Germany
- Crystal glasses, decanters: Made in Slovenia
- And the clothing and accessories line of his daughter, Ivanka, is produced entirely in factories in Bangladesh, Indonesia and China.
“By the way, you folks are in here—this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks and I tell you that because you won’t read about it, OK.”
He’s obsessed with fear that the media won’t make him look popular.
“So we’re all part of this very historic movement, a movement the likes of which, actually, the world has never seen before. There’s never been anything like this. There’s been some movements, but there’s never been anything like this.”
Actually, the world has seen a movement like this—in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Trump sees himself as the single greatest figure in history. So anything he’s involved with must be unprecedented.
“But I always say, Obamacare doesn’t work. And these same people two years ago and a year ago were complaining about Obamacare.”
In 2010, 48 million Americans lacked health insurance. By 2016, that number had been reduced to 28.6 million. So 20 million Americans now have access to medical care they previously couldn’t get.
“But we’re taking a firm, bold and decisive measure, we have to, to turn things around. The era of empty talk is over, it’s over.”
Trump has boasted that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un “fell in love.” Then he met with Kim in Vietnam—and got stiffed on a deal for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
On July 16, 2018, Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There he blamed American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—instead of Putin for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.
“I’ll tell you what they [agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement] do, they came and endorsed me, ICE came and endorsed me. They never endorsed a presidential candidate before, they might not even be allowed to.”
Trump can’t stop boasting about how popular he is.
“These are hard-working, great, great Americans. These are unbelievable people who have not been treated fairly. Hillary called them deplorable. They’re not deplorable.”
On the contrary: “Deplorable” is exactly the word for those who vote their racism, ignorance, superstition and hatred of their fellow citizens.
A FINAL NOTE: Trump held himself up for adoration just three days after Michael Cohen, his longtime fixer:
- Damned him as a racist, a conman and a cheat.
- Revealed that Trump had cheated on his taxes and bought the silence of a porn “star” to prevent her revealing a 2006 tryst before the 2016 election.
- Estimated he had stiffed, on Trump’s behalf, hundreds of workers Trump owed money to.
And, only two days earlier, Trump had returned from a much-ballyhooed meeting in Vietnam with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. Trump hoped to get a Nobel Peace Prize by persuading Kim to give up his nuclear arsenal.
Instead, Trump got stiffed—and returned home empty-handed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 28, 2019 at 12:14 am
On March 4, 2017, less than two months after taking office as President, Donald Trump—offering absolutely no evidence—accused former President Barack Obama of illegally tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election:
“I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”
A subsequent investigation by the Justice Department turned up no evidence to substantiate Trump’s foray into Presidential libel.
And during his first two weeks as President, Trump attacked 22 people, places and things on his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account.
Trump’s vindictiveness, his narcissism, his compulsive aggression, his complaints that his “enemies” in government and the press are trying to destroy him, have caused many to ask: Could the President of the United States be suffering from mental illness?
One who has dared to answer this question is John D. Gartner, a practicing psychotherapist.
John D. Gartner
Gartner graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received his Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and served as a part-time assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School for 28 years.
During an interview by U.S. News & World Report (published on January 27, 2017), Gartner said: “Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president.”
Gartner said that Trump suffers from “malignant narcissism,” whose symptoms include:
- anti-social behavior
- sadism
- aggressiveness
- paranoia
- and grandiosity.
“We’ve seen enough public behavior by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably,” said Gartner, who admitted he had not personally examined Trump.
Completely agreeing with that estimate was Bandy X. Lee, an assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
She is the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to notice that our president is mentally compromised,” she and colleague Judith Lewis Herman asserted in the book’s prologue.
According to Dr. Craig Malkin, a Lecturer in Psychology for Harvard Medical School and a licensed psychologist, Trump is a pathological narcissist:
“Pathological narcissism begins,” Malkin wrote, “when people become so addicted to feeling special that, just like with any drug, they’ll do anything to get their ‘high,’ including lie, steal, cheat, betray and even hurt those closest to them.
“When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary. In point of fact, they become dangerously psychotic. It’s just not always obvious until it’s too late.”
Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, believes that Trump is a sociopath: “The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”
More of that behavior was on full display on March 2, 2019 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.
For more than two hours, Trump delivered the longest speech (so far) of his Presidency to his fanatically Right-wing audience.
Facing a hostile Democratic House of Representatives and a potentially explosive report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump threw down the gauntlet.
“You know, I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said early on. “This is how I got elected, by being off script.”
And from the moment he embraced an American flag as though he wanted to hump it, it was clear: He was “totally off script.”
“How many times did you hear, for months and months, ‘There is no way to 270?’ You know what that means, right? ‘There is no way to 270.'”
Once again, Trump reveals his obsession with his win in 2016—as if no one else had ever been elected President.
“If you tell a joke, if you’re sarcastic, if you’re having fun with the audience, if you’re on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena, and if you say something like, ‘Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton’s emails. Please, Russia, please.'”
Here he’s trying to “spin” his infamous invitation to hackers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to intervene in an American Presidential election by obtaining the emails of his campaign rival. Which they did that same day.
“So now we’re waiting for a report, and we’ll find out whether or not, and who we’re dealing with. We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”
It doesn’t matter to Trump that America’s foremost enemy—Russia—tried to influence a Presidential election. What matters to him is that the report may end his Presidency.
“Those red hats—and white ones. The key is in the color. The key is what it says. ‘Make America Great Again’ is what it says. Right? Right?”
Color matters. Words, ideas don’t.
“We have people in Congress that hate our country.”
If you don’t agree 100% with Trump on everything, you’re a traitor.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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AMERICA AS THE WORLD’S 9-1-1: TIME TO HANG UP: PART TWO (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 13, 2021 at 12:10 amAccording to Michael Scheuer, the United States faces a danger that threatens “the core of our social and civil institutions.”
Scheuer is a 20-year CIA veteran who, from 1996 to 1999, headed Alec Station, the CIA’s unit assigned to track Osama bin Laden at the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.
He’s also the author of two seminal works on America’s fight against terrorism: Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (2003) and Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (2008).
And in Marching Toward Hell he bluntly indicts the “profound and willful ignorance” of America’s “bipartisan governing elite.”
Scheuer defines this elite as “the inbred set of individuals who have influenced…drafted and conducted U.S. foreign policy” since 1973.Within that group are:
“Some are Republicans, others Democrats; some are evangelicals, others atheists; some are militarists, others pacifists; some are purveyors of Western civilization, others are multiculturalists,” writes Scheuer.
But for all their political and/or philosophical differences, the members of this governing elite share one belief in common: “An unquenchable ardor to have the United States intervene abroad in all places, situations and times.”
And he warns that this “bipartisan governing elite” must radically change its policies–such as unconditional support for Israel and corrupt, tyrannical Muslim governments.
Otherwise, Americans will be locked in an endless “hot war” with the Islamic world.
On September 28, 2014, President Barack Obama provided an example of this “unquenchable ardor to have the United States intervene abroad in all places, situations and times.”
In an appearance on 60 Minutes, Obama spoke about his recent decision to commit American troops to fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Steve Kroft: I think everybody applauds the efforts that you’ve made and the size of the coalition that has been assembled.
But most of them are contributing money or training or policing the borders, not getting particularly close to the contact. It looks like once again we are leading the operation. We are carrying…
President Obama: Steve, that’s always the case. That’s always the case. America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world.
And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us. That’s the deal.
President Barack Obama
Kroft: I mean, it looks like we are doing 90%.
Obama: Steve…when there’s an earthquake in Haiti, take a look at who’s leading the charge making sure Haiti can rebuild. That’s how we roll. And that’s what makes this America.
Scheuer believed that America shouldn’t be the world’s 9-1-1 number. And that the place to start was by not deploying troops to Syria.
By the time Obama gave his 60 Minutes interview, more than 470,000 people had been killed in Syria’s uprising-turned-civil war. The conflict began on March 15, 2011, triggered by protests demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
And cheering on America’s intervention was the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—which was safely based in Great Britain.
According to its website:
“The silence of the International community for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria encourages the criminals to kill more and more Syrian people because they have not found anyone that deter them from continuing their crimes that cause to wound more than 1,500,000 people; some of them with permanent disabilities, make hundreds of thousands children without parents, displace more than half of Syrian people and destroy infrastructure, private and public properties.”
In short: It’s the duty of non-Muslims to bring civilized behavior to Islamics.
In fact, there were powerful reasons why the United States should steer clear of that conflict.
First, since 1979, the U.S. State Department had listed Syria as a sponsor of terrorism.
Among the terrorist groups it supports: Hizbollah and Hamas. For years, Syria provided a safehouse in Damascus to Ilich Ramírez Sánchez–-the notorious terrorist better known as Carlos the Jackal.
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez–“Carlos the Jackal”
Second, there were no “good Syrians” for the United States to support––only murderers who had long served a tyrant and other murderers who wished to become the next tyrant.
Third, the United States didn’t know what it wanted to do in Syria, except “send a message.”
Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military theorist, wrote: “War is the continuation of state policy by other means.” But President Barack Obama didn’t state his “state policy” toward Syria—or what he intended to gain by attacking it.
Obama had said he wasn’t “after regime-change.” That would leave Assad in power–-and free to go on killing those who resist his rule.
For America to avoid permanent military entanglements in the Middle East, it must learn to mind its own business.
Among Michael Scheuer’s warnings: The United States cannot defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) through air power alone.
President Barack Obama authorized airstrikes against ISIL in September, 2014. Since then, the United States Air Force has dropped thousands of bombs on ISIL convoys.
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